History

The habitation of what is now indonesia goes back to the very dawn of human existence.
Bones and artifacts of homo erectus have been found that date back a million years
of more. The climate was suitable to the limited range of the ancestors of humanity.
But the immediate ancestors of modern humans came out of Africa and so there has been
a number of migrations to the islands of Indonesia.

Even in relatively modern times these islands that now make up Indonesia have had a rich but turbulent
cultural history. There are several hundred language-culture groups
scattered throughout the islands. Probably they would not be part of
one nation except for their conquest by the Dutch. The Malay people
who constitute the majority of the peoples of what is now Indonesia are
distributed through many other places in Southeast Asia, including
what is now Malaysia and the Philippine Islands. Malays traveled to eastern
Africa on trading expeditions and settled the island of Madagascar. This is
known from the nature of the language spoken in Madagascar. The language of
Polynesia also reveal linguistic ties to the Malays.

The historical origins of the Malays are lost in time but the survival of
indigenous groups in the territory of the Malays indicate that that they were
not the first in these areas and therefore migrated from elsewhere.

The original religion of the Malays was animism and some elements of
animism survives even in modern times. Now the Malays of Indonesia and
Malaysia are predominantly moslem but that was not always the case. At some
distant time in the first few centuries of the common era (A.D.) teachers from India brought Hinduism to Indonesia and it
survives in a few places such as the island of Bali. The spread of Hinduism is a
bit of a puzzlement in that the high-caste (Brahman) priests are prohibited by their
religion from crossing the Dark Sea. But clearly teachers of Hinduism of some
sort did cross those dark seas. At a later time
Buddhism came to Indonesia as evidenced by magnificent monuments such as
Borobodur. Buddhism did not surplant Hinduism in Indonesia. Some kingdoms had Buddhist
monarchs and others had Hindu monarchs. For more on the spread of Indian culture throughout Southeast Asia see
the Indianization of Southeast Asia.

Borobodur

Islam came to Indonesia much later, about a millenium later. This put the era
of Islamization a couple of centuries or so before the time that the Portuguese
and Dutch were setting up trading stations and conquering petty kingdoms. Preceding the
the European contact in the 15th century the Ming Empire of China sent a large
armada
into the region, but internal politics in China ended those contacts.